former premier’s posthumous memoir offers a candid look inside B.C. politics

Next month will mark one year since the passing of former Premier John Horgan. And while much has been written about him since then, now it’s his turn to have the last word. John Horgan in His Own Words: A Memoir is a rare and candid read, the type seldom seen in B.C. politics, much like Horgan himself.

“It’s like having a beer with somebody you know, and you’re reading it, and you think, ‘I’m here with John Horgan and he’s talking to me about all this stuff,’” said co-author Rod Mickleburgh.

The retired journalist and longtime labour reporter had the task of conducting hours of interviews with the former premier and then whittling down Horgan’s recollections into a slim, highly readable volume.

As Mickleburgh put it in his introduction, it’s “unvarnished Horgan” — “a tale recounted with gusto, replete with zingers, blunt assessments, comical anecdotes, and frank admissions of his shortcomings.”

“I’m flattered to be called the co-author. But this is John Horgan’s book. It’s his voice from beginning to end,” Mickleburgh said.

The book began as a series of sit-down interviews — first in-person and then over Zoom while the former premier was undergoing cancer treatments. Their last session was on Oct. 2, 2024, just over a month before Horgan’s death. The result is a remarkably candid autobiography.

“He enjoyed his life and he enjoyed talking about it, and that enthusiasm comes through in the book in a very positive, enjoyable way, I think,” said Mickleburgh.

Horgan offers blunt assessments of his predecessors, his contemporaries, and even himself — unafraid to address contentious topics like his response to the deadly 2021 heat dome, the toxic drug crisis, and replacing the Royal BC Museum, for example.

Mickleburgh says Horgan was thinking about his legacy.

“He had some things to say. He was proud of his government and what they had done during his five years as premier. And he didn’t just want to ride off into the sunset.”

John Joseph Horgan was born on Aug. 7, 1959, at Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital, the youngest of four children. The family lived in the city’s Hillside neighbourhood before moving to Saanich. Sadly, his father would die of a brain hemorrhage in 1962. He was 46.

Growing up without a father, Horgan had to look elsewhere for mentors. One of those was Norm Lusk, his basketball coach. Lusk instilled in him a key principle that would come to inform Horgan’s politics years later. Lusk taught him the value of being a utility player. Rather than being the star, Horgan wanted to become the type of teammate everyone wanted to play with.

Horgan says he would apply these principles as premier, especially when forming a cabinet.

“Team sports are where you realize everyone’s important,” said Horgan. “If you are a superstar and your team still loses, what’s the point?”

“You have to be inclusive,” added Mickleburgh. “You try to include everybody. It’s a team effort, and you pursue that. He even did that with people he disagreed with. Let’s find an area of agreement.”

Horgan’s team player mentality made him seem reluctant about seeking power and advancing his own cause. Horgan had become leader of the NDP by acclamation the year after the party’s stunning loss in the 2013 provincial election. Becoming premier in 2017 was, in his words, beyond his wildest dreams.

“Whenever the opportunity presented itself, I said, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy, you should find somebody better,’” he said. “I always felt I was there to help other people, not be the leader.”

The 2017 campaign pitted Horgan against BC Liberal leader Christy Clark and Green Party leader Andrew Weaver. However, the radio debate Horgan refers to, when Clark touched his arm and told him to calm down, was not, in fact, hosted by CKNW, but by News1130, now known as 1130 NewsRadio. Bill Good, the moderator, was a paid editorialist on 1130 at the time.

Once in power, Horgan realized that governing is a series of tough decisions. He is candid about his shortcomings as premier and decisions that he would come to regret. For example, his view of how he handled the toxic drug crisis was quite telling. He regretted setting up a separate ministry for Mental Health and Addictions, despite B.C. being the first province in Canada to do so. He thought it became too focused on addictions at the expense of mental health. As a standalone ministry, it also had a much smaller budget than the main health ministry.

He also regrets his part in pushing for decrim — the decriminalization of small amounts of hard drugs. Horgan admits it’s another example of a time when he didn’t get it right.

“No one anticipated the open drug use and how big a problem it would be,” said Horgan. “It turned into a bit of a train wreck.”

“What dignity is it for someone bent like a question mark lying in the gutter on Hastings Street?”

“It didn’t work,” said Mickleburgh. “It blew up on them. And, you know, that’s another one of those situations where you try to do the right thing and it doesn’t work.”

Horgan also admits to a fractious relationship with then-Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart, who he says was someone “who saw himself as Czar of Saving the World without [having] much idea of what he was talking about.”

Horgan sums up this subject by admitting “my efforts in these matters were pretty much unsuccessful.”

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One of the hardest things for a politician is knowing when to leave. For Horgan, that thought first occurred to him during the fourth year of his term. Mickleburgh says it’s all covered in a chapter he named Annus Horribilis — the terrible year.

“There was the Heat Dome. There were the terrible floods, floods in November, and there were terrible wildfires. You know, Lytton burned down. Then he was diagnosed with his second bout of cancer,” said Mickleburgh.

Indeed, it seems being premier wasn’t as much fun as it used to be.

Then, one particular file made Horgan realize his political instincts weren’t that sharp anymore: the proposed redevelopment of the Royal BC Museum in Victoria.

“It was going to be closed for eight years. It’s going to be all these things. And the reaction was just universally hostile,” Mickleburgh said.

“[Horgan] said, ‘It was a sign to me that maybe I’ve been doing the job too long and I was missing things, and maybe it was time for someone else with a fresh approach to take over.’”

“It was a very mature decision, I thought,” said Mickleburgh.

Horgan would resign later in 2022, making way for current Premier David Eby. Horgan was then appointed Canadian Ambassador to Germany, a posting that would be cut short by his third and final cancer diagnosis. The final interview sessions for the book took place over Zoom from Horgan’s hospital bed in Berlin.

Mickleburgh hopes the reader is left with a better impression of John Horgan as a politician, but as a person as well.

“I think he was really quite a remarkable person. And I feel so fortunate I got to know him, and we really did have fun in our conversations. I have to say he was a wonderful person to talk to,” he said.

John Horgan in His Own Words: A Memoir is available from Harbour Publishing.